the truth about the snow day...

last night while Mike and I snuggled and watched the Daily show before drifting off to sleep we thought out loud about how nice a little snow day would be... you see it was supposed to snow yesterday... we even had a "severe weather alert" in effect from 6 AM to 6PM. no such luck. It tried to snow once in the afternoon while K and I were on our way home from a field trip/ lunch with friends/ shopping expedition but the sky just couldn't quite make the snow happen... so at 6 PM while we were all sadly thinking too bad so sad Portland lets another snow day slip by, something interesting happened. I mean I don't want to call the forecasters idiots or anything... but it started to snow a little right after we were supposed to stop being concerned about it.

Nothing stuck. sigh. But like I said, last night 11:30 PM found us in bed wishing for snow and laughing at Jon Stewart. We drifted off to sleep with visions of snow days stuck in our heads...

This morning the awful blaring alarm went off. Mike got up and made himself some coffee. K asked me if she could get up and I said mmmmyousureyoudon'twannawatchcartoons. She said no and got up while Mike went about his morning routine... He said "It's too bad we didn't get a snow day." K decided to be hopeful and looked out the window only to see what??? The slow but steady drift of delicate falling snow all over our quiet street... I turned on the TV. Right there on the bottom of the screen "Portland Public Schools: CLOSED"...

We had heard something funny this morning that should have made us suspicious. What did we hear? Nothing. No kids tromping loudly past the house, no cars whipping up and down the street. Silence... only the sound of the garbage trucks broke our early morning peace.

I told Mike it was a snow day. He couldn't believe it. Now you may think from my snow+school closure= Mike snow day that he works for a school. No in fact he does not... and no the high tech monolith he works for doesn't close down for a drift of snow... but Portland pretty much does. He was hesitant to agree to the snow day for a while thinking the snow would just come to an end... but as we saw more and more snow fall and the temperature not rising with the sun he gave in to the snow day mentality.

He logged in, worked a little, we got all suited up in our snowy weather clothes and decided on a little trek out to go see our friends at Marsee Bakery for eggles and warm drinks... it snowed continuously until we stepped out our front door... then the snow just stopped. The sun came out. the birds went crazy. The bakery was quiet with only a few patrons and we quickly got our yummy breakfast to go and strode back home disturbing the tiny layer of soft white that just coated our city sidewalks.

We had time for a brief snow ball fight in front of our house before heading in to warm up and eat up. Now Mike is off working away like a busy busy bee, K is partaking in the best of all indoor snowy day activities (movie time) and I sit here in my little room thinking about the wonder of our little Thursday vacation from the every day.

But the truth about the snow day is... usually... I really hate the snow unless there is a hot tub and champagne involved...